The invention relates to a method for controlling the information stream in a radio cell constituting several radio channels connecting each of a plurality of terminal stations to a main station of the cell through an ascendent path and a descendent path, these two paths being capable of transmitting code signals together with the information stream, while the information stream to be handled can have several priority levels, this method being intended to grant, from the main station, the authorization to use the ascendent path of each radio channel, to a terminal station among several of these stations that ask for this authorization.
Such a radio cell is used, for example, for covering a region and handling a telephone signal stream and a data stream between the fixed and mobile terminal stations of the cell, or between these terminal stations and outside the cell, that is to say with terminal stations of other cells or a central station common to several cells.
In each radio channel of a cell, the information streams are transmitted from the terminal stations to the main station of the cell, generally through one or several relay stations, while using several carrier frequencies in cascade arrangement forming an ascendent path. Inversely, the streams of information are transmitted from the main station to the terminal stations while using several other carrier frequencies in cascade arrangement forming a descendent path. The communications of the terminal stations of a cell among each other and with the outside are always established through the main station of the cell. Essentially, the main station serves to control these communications.
In the radio cells of this kind known hitherto, the ascendent path and the descendent path of each radio channel are used alternately, which simplifies the control of the communications in the main station, but does not correspond to an optimum use of the two paths. An increase of the information stream can be obtained by using, simultaneously, the two paths for transmitting through them, in opposite senses, data streams, or a stream of telephone signals and a data stream. However, the control of these streams by the main station then becomes more difficult. Thus the control should be carried out so that data streams are fed into the ascendent path and the descendent path of a radio channel, which alternately become unoccupied during a telephone conversation. In fact the most difficult problem to be solved is to ensure that the ascendent path, which has become unoccupied during a telephone signal stream, is assigned automatically and rapidly to a terminal station among several of such stations asking to transmit a data stream.